bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog

Archive for September, 2008

Yeah, one of our celebrity customers is none other than telly chefess Nigella Lawson, who, as I am fond of pointing out, has two legs but, incredibly, three thighs. I was watching a show of hers the other day where she was going on about visiting some fish market in Portugal and being ‘enchanted’ by all the traders singing and such as they dragged the mornings’ catch up to their stalls.

It prompted me to consider how enchanted she would be in the East Yard of Camden Lock at 7 am, with a bunch of not-getting-any-younger idiots blearily shouting at each other to fuck off. Usually mingling with this are the horribly juicy range of noises produced by Sammy the Orange hockling up phlegm, which sounds like a racehorse being throttled and is audible as far away as Belsize Park. I must drop Lawson an invite to pop down and see how peckish she feels after listening to twenty minutes of that, while having to contend with Dave trying to put his cock in her coffee for a laugh.

Dave did in fact tell me the other day that he wanted to fight women, which was an extraordinary thing to say next to a vegetarian tea shop, and also that he was going to get a stun gun and apply it to people in the market at random, which to be fair would be a proper larf. I think this may be a symptom of the escalating prank situation in the East Yard which has latterly seen a spirited if ultimately vain attempt to attach Christian to a trolley with bungee cords and a load of our storage boxes, which are fortunately waterproof and bouyant, being floated out onto the canal.

In response to this last item, I purchased an A4 pad, drew a big cock with all spunk coming out of it on every page, and carefully placed one into each of the bags on Dave’s stall in the West Yard. It’ll be like the golden tickets in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I am going to try and cover his East Yard and Oxford Arms stalls too in the run up to Christmas, and await a load of ‘Yeah I bought a bag from you last week and took it out to a job interview, whereupon I discovered that there was a sheet of paper inside that had a cock with all spunk coming out drawn on it’-style complaints or, perhaps even more effective although sadly non-viewable, would be ‘Mummy, why has Santa drawn a big cock with all spunk coming out of it on this sheet of paper?’ In short, if you are buying bags from Camden Market over the rest of the year, make sure you check for sheets of paper inside that have big cocks with all spunk coming out drawn on them.

Incidentally, some of you may possibly – although thb I doubt it – be wondering where Joe is at the moment. I’ll tell you. He’s recruiting charity muggers in Bristol. Yeah whatever, we need to scrape funds together innit.

Anyway. This weeks’ photos are: a) top inset – Dave and Steve contemplate a rainy Bank Holiday b) Early morning in the East Yard. This is our pitch without all the stuff on. In the background is Joseph the Pervert, who if you like being urinated on by fat gas mask wearing strangers at the Torture Garden, is quite a hot date c) Dave’s proper spiked West Yard stall. The passer by is unaware that each bag contains a sheet of paper which has a big cock with all spunk coming out drawn on it d) Exhausted Paul asleep on the stall on a Monday afternoon.

Being a Londoner I am suspicious of air that I can’t chew, I need to be mugged at least annually and if someone isn’t trying to blow me up I don’t feel loved. I was therefore on principle less than enthralled with having to trawl out to Gloucestershire, which could be on the moon for all I know, for Joe and Abby’s wedding. The ceremony itself – over which, let’s not forget, I was actually presiding – took place in the garden of Abby’s uncle’s house or something, and those of us who made up what was effectively the Away support for Joe had met in Bristol to await a minibus. Our progress was immediately hampered by having to hunt around for some girl who nobody actually knew and was known only by her description, which was ‘very fat’. This was further complicated by the fact that as the enormous woman in question was very sensitive about her size, no one was to make any reference at all to, I dunno, cake retention, placing armed guards around the wedding buffet, or cramming food into your face like a panicking hamster.

Yeah, considering I don’t like either honey or brandy, I was intrigued recently to find myself banging honey brandy shots off the bar at the Duke of Wellington public house, Toynbee Street London E1 at 3 in the morning with the rest of the Idiot Battalion making up Joe’s stag night. It was a shambolic crew by that point, as you can probably imagine, and I had reached the point where words seemed to be too large to get out of my mouth. I have a recollection of the best man raising a glass to the happy couple and falling over, exactly like the Statue of Liberty would do, and of Piers – Joe’s brother, with the title of ring-bearer on the day of the wedding itself, like some kind of hobbit or whatever – shouting at a jukebox.